If you have an offline store supporting an online presence or even if you exist only online, it makes sense to expose your URL's and special promotions at every opportunity. Doing so helps to build credibility and natural inbound links.
Sean D'Souza at Copyblogger calls them "a few measly words." I like to refer to it as "Thesaurus surfing." Either way, Sean offers up a couple of fantastic examples of how adding a target and some adjectives to your article titles can go a long way toward tightening up your content and enticing readers to click through and follow you along for the literary ride.
Earlier this week I wrote a post reminding small businesses why it's so important to consider launching a blog to go with their web site. At the time, I pointed out the benefit of ever-changing content. Today, i ran across a great post over at ProBlogger exploring nearly two dozen types of static pages you should consider building into your blog. While the idea of creating static pages on a blog may sound counterintuitive, it's actually an important part of blog creation many people miss.
Professional and comedic props go to Stoney deGeyter of Pole Position Marketing this week for his article "The Anatomy of a 12-Month Link Baiting Campaign." Stoney clearly defines his step-by-step process for becoming a "household name" over the span of a year. His humor and bares all attitude make the article both amusing and informative....
Sage encourages industry experts to be aware of their audience as Search Engine Roundtable reveals, via Jacob Neilson findings, that 25% of people don't know how to do a Google search. SEMPO releases statistics at SES New York from a survey that shows the North American search marketing industry growing from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.4 billion in 2007 and projecting an increase to $25.2 billion by the year 2011. Also, YouTube announces the "Adorable Laughing Baby" as the winner of its contest....
The main purpose of a competitive analysis should be to gain awareness of the competitive factors analyzed and to leverage the client's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) to their advantage. So what kind of factors should be included in an online competitive analysis...
If you're a marketer and you put content online...you want data. Data is what tells us our ideas our working. Data is also what tells us our ideas are falling short. It's what tells us who came, where they came from, how long they hung around and if they actually did anything during their visit. The problem data loving marketers are facing these days is how to reconcile new sources of traffic and exposure with an extreme lack of insight into how people are interacting with our content.
While catching up on my RSS feeds today, I came across a post at Matt McGee's Small Business SEM that's a few days old, but well worth mentioning. The post dives into the issue of Alexa rankings and explains why they should not be used as a gauge of how successful a web site is.
No doubt some of you looked at your calendars last week and realized you'd missed the $850 early bird price for our upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston. Don't sweat it, we've got you covered. We've spent the last six months building the perfect conference for you. We know how busy you are. Do you think we'd let you miss out on this great show just because you forget to set an alert on your calendar?
Trust is a key usability issue when it comes to running a successful online business. Most people automatically view web businesses with a bias against them compared to their brick and mortar counterparts. Your ability to convince your visitors that yours is a trustworthy business is one of the key components to getting visitors to convert into customers. Creating a website that conveys trust can be tricky. There are rarely any answers that are always "right" for every visitor. There are, however, several factors that have universal appeal to the weary shopper.
It's a common question that companies who are considering hiring a search engine optimization company often face - is this something that we can do in-house? More importantly, can we do this in-house and get the same results that an expert search engine optimization company would provide?
While social media is still the topic du jour at major search conferences, I'm still hearing a lot of buzz about blogs. While Technorati is tracking more than 121 million blogs these days, we're still no where near the saturation point. The issue now is convincing small businesses of the need to consider launching a blog. That's what Grant Griffiths is aiming to do over at Home Office Warrior with his great list of 12 Ways a Blog Can Benefit Your Business.
Getting links is great, but as search marketers we should be looking far beyond that. We should not be so much as trying to get other websites to link to us (that's certainly a welcome result) but we should instead be working on getting exposure, in whatever format that comes in.
SEO, Usability, and Analytics are the best investment that you can make for your online business. In fact, dollar for dollar, these recession proof tactics should result in some of the best ROI you'll see from your web site. If you're still on the fence when it comes to investing in any of these three areas, you could be missing out on a wide-open opportunity to get the most out of your website.
If you've been looking for more control over who sees the ads you run via Google AdWords, here's your chance. Google began beta testing demographic bidding back in January and opened the program up to all AdWords advertisers last Friday. Granted, when they say all AdWords advertisers, they mean all the ones utilizing the content network, but this new feature still gives small business owners far more control than they've ever had over who sees their AdWords ads.
The Dallas Business Journal recently ran a story on one of our clients, Wasp Barcode Technologies, describing how they went from spending enormous amounts of money on PPC to focusing more on traditional SEO and link building. The strategy paid off -- Wasp spent less and got better results. These are the kind of results every small to medium sized business would like to enjoy....
Want more traffic to your blog? Of course you do. But how do you get it? It's a question that many bloggers struggle with, but thankfully there are several fairly easy ways you can start today to grow your blog's traffic.
A long time ago search marketing was mainly a vehicle for small businesses to compete with the big boys. For the many Fortune 500 companies that now outsource at least some sort of search marketing, presenting results whether it's through analytics, lead generation, or sales can be tricky yet still highly effective.
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